Kennedy’s Camelot Myth is Irresistible

As I noted over Instapundit.com (why yes, I am part of the Army of Davids Guest Bloggers sitting in this week for the hardest working man in the Blogosphere), Noemie Emery has a new article at the Washington Examinerin which she writes:

A few weeks ago, our colleague Gene Healy asked for an end to the Camelot movies, a noble idea that is not going to happen. The story and themes are simply too powerful, the characters too eternal and too enigmatic, the appeal too universal to fade.

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Camelot was also played up as part of a power grab by the Kennedy supporters, who would have been upset about losing power via assassination anyway, but were driven to rage that the assassination took place in the home state of the vice-president they both disliked and disrespected, which has had after-effects that still affect liberalism and the country to this day.

The hard left and JFK were destined for conflict if Kennedy had survived to run for re-election, while despite LBJ’s civil rights and Great Society programs, the family moved left in the late 60s in alliance with the hard left, because they saw Vietnam as the way to topple Johnson and regain power through Bobby’s election. A JFK who lived to serve a second term would have still faced the ire of the crank left, but would have been opposed instead of supported by the Hyannisport crowd, and down the line, we would likely have seen an Edward M. Kennedy who was far less liberal than the one who became their champion after RFK’s assassination (and at the same time, George W. Bush’s hailing from Texas drove aging liberal nostalgic for Camelot even wilder than if he had been from Kansas or Arizona, since many on the left still want to believe Oswald was just a dupe and JFK really was murdered by a Texas-based right-wing conspiracy).